Stories We Love: “The Bees,” by Dan Chaon
by Shawn Andrew Mitchell
“‘The Bees’ is one hundred percent, additive-free parental nightmare fuel, from the inexplicable screams to the accidental and intentional harms to the final body bags.”
“‘The Bees’ is one hundred percent, additive-free parental nightmare fuel, from the inexplicable screams to the accidental and intentional harms to the final body bags.”
“The horror of the residency is not that one can’t leave; it’s that one doesn’t have to”: Nora Kipnis on Carmen Maria Machado’s version of the cabin in the woods.
Danielle LaVaque-Manty talks with Nick Scorza about lakes vs. oceans, genre, and the work of plotting and publishing his debut novel, People of the Lake.
From the Archives: Neelanjana Banerjee talks with Helen Oyeyemi about why she’s drawn to supernatural subjects (but not “magical realism”), why vampire stories are really about race, and how to write stories that will freak your readers out.
“For me, the setting of a novel is the novel in many ways, and it seems right to devote time and space to establishing the geography and history of the place. This forms a frame inside which the rest of the story takes place.” Andrew Michael Hurley talks with Steven Wingate about rural England, the “ghost story” spirit, and developing writerly patience.
“One of the things I also wanted to happen over the course of the collection was to unsettle people enough that even when they were reading realism, they didn’t know that they were reading realism”: Kristen Roupenian talks with Michelle Cheever about genre, empathy, and more.
“Visitations is all about reckonings. Who are you at your most selfish, Upton asks, at your most desperate, your most monstrous?”: Emily Nagin on Lee Upton’s latest collection, out now from LSU Press.
Percy has turned himself into a cross-medium, cross-genre success whose unabashed embrace of work outside the narrow confines of literary fiction is opening up new opportunities and allowing him to have a hell of a good time.
Stephen King’s 1978 Night Shift takes advantage of the “safe” scare, but the story collection’s real artistry is in accessing his reader’s willingness to endure “safe” fear and turning it on the reader himself.
Stephen King’s newest novel, Joyland, is set in a North Carolina amusement park during the summer of 1973. Like the attractions that populate the book, it’s a read perhaps more enjoyable for the ride than the destination.
